Now You Feel Old: 17 Facts about the Class of 2017!

Fall is in the air. The frosh are back on campus, chanting, screaming, causing general havoc and every so often it’s like you’re crossing the Bruinen, and next thing you know, you’ve been swept up and now you’re suddenly climbing up a football upright covered in grease and surrounded by engineers when you just were trying to head home.

Note: This is a factual representation of how frosh groups move.

In the spirit of Frosh week, I thought I’d share some facts with you. Since this will be the Class of 2017, here are 17 things that happened the year the frosh were born – 1995!

1. The Prime Minister of Canada was Jean Chrétien

2. TLC released their most successful single: Waterfalls. It spent seven weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was their second #1 hit following 1994′s Creep. It still remains very sound advice for life, especially if you’re a salmon.

3. Daniel Alfredsson played his first season with the Ottawa Senators, winning the Calder for the 95-96 season and scoring 61 points in 82 games. He went on to play 1178 games with Ottawa over 17 seasons, 14 of those as Captain, making him the longest serving European captain in NHL history. He then retired. Yes. He didn’t sign with another team in the same division. He retired.

*sobs uncontrollably*

4. Deep Blue Something release “Breakfast at Tiffany’s!” The song is now known as the thing everyone says when asked “What do you want to do for breakfast?”

5. Oasis releases their most recognizable hit, Wonderwall in 1995. By 1996, every guy ever has learnt how to play it on guitar, and now if you’re ever in a group of more than 4 guys and a guitar, The Oasis Law ™ states that at least one will try and play Wonderwall and encourage you all to join in.

6. Casio released the QV-10, the first consumer digital camera. It had 16 MB of memory (about the same as 3 pop songs, or one song by Iron Maiden), and lasted 2 hours on 4 AA batteries.

7. In perhaps the most musically important point for many of our readers, the Backstreet Boys were propelled into national stardom with their debut hit “We’ve Got It Going On.” Featuring such deep lyrics as “If you really wanna see / What we can do for you, oh / I’ll send the crazy wildin’ static / Sing it” and “Jam on cuz Backstreet’s got it,” it set the tone for future male artists to rhyme words like “Baby” with “Baby ooh.”

8. Michael Bay, the director that brought us such wonderful films as Armageddon, Pearl Harbour and the Transformers film series made his feature-film directing début with Bad Boys, and asked movie watchers one one simple question:

Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

9. On the small screen, Blossom and Full House both ended in that year. One of the stars went on to earn her PhD. The others went on to become the eleventh richest women in entertainment. Sadly, they weren’t the same person.

10. Toy Story 1 was released, showing that an animated movie could tug at your heartstrings. Interesting fact: The villain in Toy Story 3 was originally intended to be the villain in the first film, but they lacked the technology to animate his fur effectively. He still makes an appearance in the first movie, appearing in the backdrop, and also makes a cameo in Up!

11. Continuing on the animated front, Pocahontas came out. The film would be remade 14 years later.

12. Se7en came out. No jokes here, that movie is really good.

13. The PlayStation was released, heralding the end of Sega and Nintendo’s dominance of the home entertainment marketplace.

14. On the tech front, Yahoo! was founded and became one of the most popular search engines on the internet, until Ask Jeeves came along and became the global superpower it is today.

(That was sarcasm)

15. Also in 1995, there was an NHL lockout. Some things don’t change.

16. The DVD is announced. We never thought we’d need any more memory on a disc ever again.

17. And perhaps the most important thing to happen in 1995 was this: The greatest movie ever made, the one that revolutionized film making, acting as a yardstick by which all other movies are measured was released.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m talking about Die Hard With A Vengeance.

Thanks. I thought I had erased 1995 from my memory, it being the year I cut my hair too short, rocked a head gear and then braces and watched my best friend move away. Oh and was in a hurricane when I went to Florida. (Ok. The hurricane part was kinda cool)